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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

GATTACA is about genetic design rather than genetic testing.

The protagonist doesn't wish his brother was born with his same gene for heart failure, he wishes companies would stop using genetic tests to filter out candidates.

Most of the movie deals with bad guys trying to find trace hair and DNA from imposters. Genetic testing.

He wishes it the way modern antivaxxers wish big pharma would stop giving kids autism.

What? In the movie he wishes for the companies to stop doing something they are actually doing. They are overzealously testing for any possible problem and marking people as unclean.

It's unsubtle textbook discrimination, removing perfectly good candidates from consideration. The company is hardly affected, there are plenty of candidates, but since these people are shunned by most companies they suffer terribly.

How in the world does that related to people with imaginary causes of autism.

From his perspective it certainly must seem that way. He can probably even point to a paper published by a legitimate researcher to show that it does happen. Even if it was written by someone who was paid to do so and all his coauthors later retracted their support.

You're actually arguing that it is a fringe opinion that the companies in Gattaca are discriminating based on genes?

They discriminate in the same sense that that real companies today discriminate based on candidates' skills and experience. Selecting the most qualified candidates and filtering out candidates because they trip certain flags are procedurally very different.

Sure, when the qualifications have anything to do with the job. When you apply a test to applicants, if it happens to have a bias that touches protected groups you had better have a very good argument that it relates directly to core job requirements or you are leaving yourself open to a massive lawsuit. Which might happen anyway.

Plus all the circumstances where you must make reasonable accommodations even if it has some impact, as long as they can still do the job.

Applying real-life ideas about what is protected to a eugenicist utopia really makes sense to you?

When we're looking at how its use of genetic testing acts as a prediction of the future? Makes total sense to me.

But changing laws when there are radical shifts to society doesn't?

Laws do not change the concept of discrimination.

There is a big difference between picking qualified individuals vs. systematically picking certain groups over others.

He's not imagining the tests. The evidence of tests is not one guy lying in a tiny study.

Laws are the entirety of the concept of discrimination.

Gattaca doesn't really show off any technological problems so much as it does a new kind of racism. Which, frankly, is not a problem so unmanageable that we should avoid genetic engineering to prevent.

Basically, Gattaca's problems could be managed by passing a couple of well-designed laws.

"...This could explain why well-educated, intelligent people, all across the political spectrum, so often make the unspoken assumption that good intentions and well-crafted words are sufficient for making good public policy"

http://jaltcoh.blogspot.com/2015/04/what-are-we-doing-when-w...

Why make a quip that can be pulled out for just about any topic, when we have an actual law in place - the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008? Is that a 'well-designed law'?

It's certainly more than "good intentions and well-crafted words", as the $2.25 million award for the GINA lawsuit earlier this year shows. See http://www.nature.com/news/why-the-devious-defecator-case-is... . While that's the first one to get to trial, the article says that the EEOC filed 333 cases last year which cited GINA.

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